GENEALOGY WITH A RABBIT – SERIOUSLY
ONE MORE TIME WITH FEELING (2022)
MARCH: With Me Time drawing to a close, I hope to finish most of my 19 drafts sitting in The Cue.
HOPEFUL RE-START (2021)
APRIL: All genealogy work is listed under one heading now.
MARCH: Page names are changing. Trying out a few things. (More mergers.). If you have any ideas, short of deleting everything and starting over, drop me a line.
ME TIME (2019-2020-2021-2022) COVID19
ALL TOGETHER NOW (2018) almost
Yes, it made sense to combine my cemetery and genealogy blogs. Duplicated posts were eliminated and overlapping ones were amalgamated.
Just as genealogists visit cemeteries looking for information of loved ones and ancestors, I found information worked better in one blog, rather than hopping back and forth between two — or three, because not all my memorial posts for late family members were eloquent thoughts. Some memorials were verses I wrote and shared on my poetry site.
So, figuratively, with all three blogs in one place, I hope my combined efforts will be more informative, thought-provoking and, if all else fails, at least entertaining.
ROCK OF AGES: GRAVE CONCERNS (2010)
Like most youngsters, my earliest experiences of cemeteries were during funerals of elderly family members that I had met once or had never met at all!
It was not until 1981 (six years after I lost my Gramma Rabbit) that my frozen fear left me and I resumed the family visits every week through the summers.
Graveyards. Churchyards. Pioneer burial grounds. I have traipsed through many, from British Columbia to Nova Scotia. Big and small. From the manicured and maintained to the overrun and forgotten.
Every cemetery has character, and is filled with them too, whether they are lawmakers or lawbreakers, heroes or homeless. Each cemetery in its own, can reveal the unique history of the community (or communities) populated near it, if you are brave enough to take the time to walk through its gates.
Every marker holds a story to the person, or persons, laid buried beneath it; whether it is conveyed with endearing words or poignant images. Some shout out Bravery and Sacrifice, while others hold secrets that only a plot number *might* reveal.
Then, there are the untold mysteries — the pock-marked rocks, from the earliest burials running parallel along the wrought iron fence, or the sunken mounds that lay unidentified behind the original caretaker’s shed, or the beautifully carved wooden cross, crippled and alone in the far back corner with only “FATHER” to identify it.
YOUR ROOTS ARE SHOWING, DEARIE (2011) and RAINGATE (2016):
My genealogy and poetry blogs, respectively, were suffering. I can still ramble (and rhyme) almost any topic under the Sun or the Moon, except I cannot hold two words together when confronted with one of two things:
- “Tell me something about yourself.” Usually heard close to the end of a job interview; or,
- Use of the word “essay.” (I still choke.).
(My) “Gramma Rabbit” was Emily, who was my paternal grandmother. A lot of the genealogy stories contained here are about her, raising a family of seven young men between 2 years and 11 years and a 9-month-old baby girl – my “Aunt E,” the Nun.
It was WWII and Emily lost her husband twenty (20) days before Christmas 1939.
She introduced me to heraldic art, family history (namely, the bits she had between The Testaments in her French Bible) and graveyard maintenance. So, if I have been the slightest bit helpful in anyway during your research, all credit and praise belongs to her.
But, the family curse of poetry, I inherited *that* from my father, a third-generation Wordsmith and a second-generation incurable romantic. Unfortunately, neither talent (his nor mine) is worthy of making a living from.
That’s it for now.
SLR